The Politics of PostmodernismDriven by a desire to show why postmodernism should matter, this study of representation in art forms—from fiction and film to photography and painting—examines the potential and real political challenges of the postmodern to dominant western ideologies, past and present. Less about the representation of politics than about the politics of representation, this book examines a wide range of postmodern art that is paradoxically both self-reflexive/textual and worldly/historical, that is, looking both inward and outward. While this mode of double-coded representation can be considered politically compromised, it can also be seen as a way to “de-naturalize” the things western culture takes for granted. Postmodern representations—its images and stories—are anything but neutral, even if their critique is inevitably complicitous. Table of ContentsChapter One: Representing the Postmodern Chapter Two: Postmodern Representation Chapter Three: Re-presenting the Past Chapter Four: The Politics of Parody Chapter Five: Text/Image Border Tensions Chapter Six: Postmodernism and Feminisms Epilogue: The Postmodern . . .in Retrospect Concluding Note: Some Directed Reading Bibliography |